‘The First Purge’ Trailer Takes Us Back To the Violent Beginning

“Our nation is under siege from a government who doesn’t give a sh–t about any of us.” Wait, is that a line from the trailer for The First Purge or from a documentary about 2018 America?

The fourth Purge movie is definitely not acting subtle in its allusions to our current political climate; I mean, did you see the that red hat poster? The new movie takes us back to the beginning of it all, to the first time the government granted its citizens the freedom to commit the most heinous acts imaginable for a full 12 hours. Marisa Tomei plays the woman who started the sadistic tradition, designing it as a social experiment. “If we want to save our country,” she says in the trailer, “we must release all our anger in one night.” Cool, yeah, definitely a great idea! Thankfully there’s some sound-of-mind folks, led by Insecure‘s Y’lan Noel, who try to fight back.

Here’s the full synopsis:

To push the crime rate below one percent for the rest of the year, the New Founding Fathers of America (NFFA) test a sociological theory that vents aggression for one night in one isolated community. But when the violence of oppressors meets the rage of the marginalized, the contagion will explode from the trial-city borders and spread across the nation.

The First Purge, directed by Gerard McMurray (Netflix’s Burning Sands), is written by Purge series screenwriter James DeMonaco who described the new film as “a monetization of murder and violence, incentivizing killing and keeping people around for them to be victims.” The concept, in which poor people from Staten Island are paid to become victims and, as the trailer shows, involves some deeply messed up military involvement, has a lot of potential for insightful political commentary. Let’s just hope DeMonaco and his director do it well. Prepare for a savage violence this Independence Day when the film hits theaters.